From: J.B. Moreno (planb@newsreaders.com)
Date: Wed Mar 05 2003 - 12:36:53 CST
On 3/5/03 10:22 AM, Ken Murchison at <ken@oceana.com> wrote:
> "J.B. Moreno" wrote:
>>> RFC 1036 (the current standard) defers the matter to RFC 822,
>>> which is quite clear that those 15% (or the authors of software
>>> used by them) have alienated themselves.
>>
>> See, that's what I don't like -- the absolute contempt in the above
>> statement: they haven't "alienated themselves", they found themselves being
>> inadequatly served by the existing standard and had to go beyond it to get
>> things done.
>
> Bullshit. They _have_ alienated themselves. If they had a problem with
> the standard not serving their needs, they should have ammended/improved
> the standard first, not just make shit up and try to make everybody else
> comply later (sounds like a big company in Redmond, WA).
So kids in Brazil and housewives in Korea should have worked on rewriting a
standard instead of getting on with the gossip?
Or does the fact that they are non-technical users mean they are irrelevant?
There are very few people actually interested in writing standards, no
matter how much they think something is needed.
>> They had a problem, they solved it, their solution works for them.
>
> Works for them and only them. Why are we trying to cater to a clear
> minority (assuming that 15% is the correct number), that clearly
> violated existing standards?
Because given that the vast majority of traffic is English, the 15% are
clearly a majority of the non-English traffic.
As for the 15% being correct, Andrew's analysis from last year shows:
969,947 are in non-binary groups, of which
152,000 have at least one 8bit character, of which
152,000/969,947 = 15.67% of all non-binary posts contain 8 bit characters.
And from a recent post of his:
In the big-8 hierarchies (international scope but overwhelmingly
English-language) the use of non-ASCII subjects (whether RFC2047 or
raw 8-bit) is rare (overall 1%; ranges as low as 0.2% for comp.* and
as high as 4% for soc.*, which has the soc.culture.* groups and thus
most of the non-English traffic).
He doesn't say what percentage of the post are in the big-8, but I'd guess
it was at least 50%.
Clearly the "just send 8 bit" crowd are a large portion of those who aren't
using English.
> I'm all for maintaining compatibility with existing practice, but I won't lose
> any sleep if the "just send 8-bit" camp gets left out in the cold. They made
> their bed, they are going to have to sleep in it.
And this is *exactly* what we don't want to happen -- if that happens then
there will be a split (probably multiple splits), where what we do only
applies to those using "English".
>> It's the fault of the people writing the standards that they had to do so.
>
> The standards were written for what was needed at the time. Perhaps
> they were short-sighted, but that's not the point. If a part of the
> community needed the standards extended, they should have worked through
> a WG or similar. You can't just do what works in your little corner of
> the sandbox without taking into account the rest of the playground.
That's what users are going to do every single time -- they don't have the
time, the ability, or the interest to do anything else. They vote with
their feet, not with a WG.
Those writing the standards need to understand that, and work within the
constraint that if what they say is too far outside of what the users are
willing to do, they simply won't do it.
Or to put it another way -- probably most of the members of this WG could
find a use for some extra cash, but if we put in a requirement (a hard MUST)
that for every single post made using compliant news software, 5¢ should be
sent to an account for the WG, to be divided up evenly, at the end of a year
we would have a balance much closer to zip than to 18 million.
-- J.B. Moreno